Woodland girls hoops defeats Pioneer in rivalry game

Hindsight may be 20/20, but when Woodland High School girls coach Nick Arriaga looked at Janet "Texas" Cordova before Friday's game against Pioneer, he had perfect foresight.

"I just saw something in her eye - it looked special," Arriaga said of the Wolves senior.

So the coach trotted up to Cordova, who usually comes off the bench, and said, "Get yourself ready mentally, because you're going to be starting." By the end of the first quarter, Arriaga's feelings were affirmed.

Cordova, who earned her nickname after arriving from the Longhorn State before last season, also proved another adage: Everything's Bigger in Texas. The guard hit two 3-pointers in the first quarter to spark the Wolves (6-15, 2-3 Tri-County Conference) to a 55-32 home win over the Patriots (1-18, 1-4 TCC).

"At the beginning, when (Arriaga) told me that I was going to start, I was like, 'OK this is my game, this is Pioneer, we've got to go get it,'" Cordova said. "The guys laid the foundation out (in Thursday's Woodland boys victory over Pioneer) and it was our turn to talk."

Cordova did her talking from beyond the arc. She added an exclamation mark at the end of the first quarter with a 3-pointer as part of a four-point play.

"I didn't even expect the girl to come foul me, but as soon as she did I was like, well, I'm making this free throw too," Cordova said. "I knew it was going to fall."

The Wolves went up 14-4 when the free throw swished, and fellow Wolves senior Amanda Miller felt the momentum change.

"That four-point play, it got us all fired up to push us more," Miller said.

Arriaga certainly was excited.

"That four-point play really energized everyone. I don't think I've yelled louder," he said. "That definitely made our energy go way high. And we didn't look back from there, not at all."

The Patriots couldn't turn the contest around. They scored double-digits in just one quarter and shot just 10 of 57 from the field overall.

"We've had a lot of games where we've shot bad," Pioneer coach Mark Rocha said. "It's been much better of late. But today we just weren't moving the ball well."

Rocha attributed that to Woodland's defensive scheme.

"We've seen a zone maybe two quarters all year," he said. "We got a little stagnant against it. We'd get the ball and hold it on the wing for a couple seconds rather than moving it and making that zone shift."

That wasn't all Rocha saw troubling his squad.

"It might have just been the bigger crowd - we don't play in front of those (often) - and everyone is fired up because of the rivalry," he said. "I chalk it up to that."

Arriaga said his team's victory was due to Cordova and Emily King, who had 12 and 19 points respectively. King was 8 of 17 from the free-throw line, including four makes on nine attempts in the fourth quarter, which upset Rocha.

"There were definitely (foul) calls I disagreed with, a lot," he said. "But I don't think it cost us the game. It made it look different on the scoreboard." Three Patriots fouled out of the contest, including leading scorer Angelica Navarro.

Surprisingly, Navarro welcomed her fifth foul.

"When I saw my fourth foul up there, I knew I just had to get a fifth," said Navarro, who had 13 points and five rebounds on the night. "I've never fouled out of a game ... so I had to foul out of this one. I gave it my all."

Madison Bellin added 10 points for Pioneer along with five steals.

"Bellin, she drives to the hoop," Navarro said. "I like to kick the ball out to her. That's probably the one person I feel most comfortable with the ball."

While Rocha said the loss was tough to swallow on the heels of his team's first win of the season on Wednesday, Navarro disagreed.

"Not tough at all, because we have a tough team," she said. "It's time for us to be hungry for it (and) this should make us more hungry for the next game, and the next and the next."

Pioneer will host River Valley on Tuesday, while Woodland travels to Natomas.